Doctoral Candidate
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Email: nusrat_mim [at] gsd [dot] harvard [dot] edu
Curriculum Vitae Google Scholar
Nusrat Jahan Mim
Nusrat Jahan Mim is a Doctor of Design candidate at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her research focuses on post-colonial, post-secular urban designs and human-computer interaction. By examining existing systems, she explores how different spatial and technical designs challenge or propagate social exclusions in the Global South. She designs alternatives for such marginal contexts. Her work has earned awards in leading design and computing venues including ACM CHI, Lafarge-Holcim, Laka International, etc. Prior to Harvard, she won the prestigious AIA Henry Adams Medal from Syracuse School of Architecture for achieving the highest academic rank in M.Arch. She also achieved citation for excellence in her M.Arch thesis titled Subaltern Virtualities. She achieved her B.Arch with distinction from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
News
Apr 26- Guest Critics at Columbia GSAPP MSAUD:
TOWARD CLIMATE JUSTICE AND RESILIENCE CARIBBEAN BASIN
Mar 24- Guest Editor at IXD&A journal’s special issue on Digital Technologies for Supporting Inclusion.
Mar 24- completed serving as an Associated Chair at CHI 2024 in the Design Subcommittee.
Feb 24- Invited Talk at the Royal College of Arts, UK
Feb 24- Invited Talk at Penn State University, USA
Sep 23- Awarded with Aga Khan Endowment Fund
Jun 23- Book Chapter published from Routledge
Jan 23- Reviewer at CHI 2023
Sep 2022- Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative Fellowship 2022-23
Sep 2022- The Aga Khan Endowment Fund Fellowship 2022-23
Aug 2022- started working as Graduate Student Associate at LMSAI at Harvard University
Jun-Aug 2022- Harvard GSD Summer Grant
Feb 22- served at AC at CHI Late0Breaking Work, 2022
Jan 22- Reviewer at CHI, 2022
Dec 2021- Invited Juror at ArchTwist Design Competition: Death in Between.
Oct 2021- Op-ed published in the Daily Bonik Barta
Jun-Aug 2021- The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University Summer Grant
May 21- Invited at M.Arch Thesis Discussion at the Syracuse School of Architecture.
May 21- Received Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at CHI 2021
May 21- Received Harvard Mittal South Asia Institute Summer Research Grant.
Mar 21- Interaction article got published [Link]
Jan 21- Paper got accepted in CHI
Jan 21- Started working as a Teaching Fellow at the Harvard GSD
Oct 20- Started working as a Research Assistant at the Harvard GSD
Sep 20- Appeared on "Journeys in Tech" [Link]
Sep 20- Started working as a Teaching Fellow at the Harvard GSD
Aug 20- Appeared on University of Toronto Scientista [Link]
Aug 20- Article on Religion at the Margins: Resistance to Secular Humanitarianism at the Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh has been published in Religions Journal.
Jun 20- received Summer Research Grant from Harvard GSD.
Jun 20- Invited Talk at Discourse Online Session (008) with Ar. NR Khan, Ar. Mahmudul Anwar Riyaad, Ar. Saad Ben Mostafa, Jimi Chakma, and Aida Hassan.
May 20 - Our paper on Pather Panchani: Diversity and Inclusion in Designing Sidewalks in Dhaka, Bangladesh has been published in the Proceeding of the 7th International Conference S.ARCH-2020. Co-Authors: Arundhuti Dey, Najmush Shaker.
May 20 - My Op-ed on COVID-19, Religion and the City, published in Bangladeshi National Daily Prothom Alo
May 20 - Rizvi Hassan, Nadyeli Quiroz, John Wagner, and I participated at a Facebook LIVE discussion on Architecture for Refugees in Bangladesh with Bence Komlosi.
April 20- Ishtiaque Ahmed and I received Best Paper Honorable mention at ACM SIGCHI for our paper Others' Images: Online Social Media, Architectural Improvisations, and Spatial Marginalization in Bangladesh.
March 20 - Received HDR Architecture Graduate Student Scholarship.
January 20 - Invited Talk at BRAC University, Design Conversation: Emergen-city - Architecture in the age of migration
Dec 19 - Field Trip at Rohingya Refugee Camp in Bangladesh with John Wagner (MArch 19, GSD) and Nadyeli Quiroz (MLA, MDes 20, GSD)
September 19 - Grand Prize Winner at MPower Global Citizen Scholarship.
August 19 - Invited Talk at School of Architecture and Design, BRAC University on Non Linear Design Thinking.
July 19 - Finalist in Emergency Mexican Housing: Home for Everyone,Design Competition by Archstorming.
F-commerce and Urban Modernities: The Changing Terrain of Housing Design in Bangladesh
This paper critically examines the impacts of social media-based business on urban residential architecture in Dhaka, Bangladesh and joins the growing body of work in critical HCI. Based on a seven-month-long qualitative empirical study in Dhaka, this paper reports how Facebook commerce (F-commerce) drives many local women to actively engage in home-based businesses, which in turn, challenges the inherent spatial regulations of modern residential architecture. [See More] [Related Paper]
Ambivalence: Simultaneous Tactile Experiences of Using and Recycling Smartphones
This demonstration is built on the postcolonial scholar, Homi Bhabha's idea of Ambivalence and exhibits experiences of "smooth" and "rough" tactile feelings simultaneously to convey to a typical smartphone user the struggles of electronic waste (e-waste) workers when they dismantle, test, and recycle broken electronic devices. [See More] [Related Paper]
Stories of the Streets: Diversity and Inclusion in Designing Sidewalks in Bangladesh
To avoid increasing traffic congestions and to achieve a global city aesthetic, recent infrastructural city development interventions in Dhaka city are focusing on transforming the sidewalks only as a street component for uninterrupted pedestrian movement. Such functionally linear thinking around sidewalks has resulted in wider roads, narrower sidewalks, evictions of street vendors and other service providers, and hence, economic and cultural marginalization of the city’s significant portion of the informal workforce. This project documents the stories from five dynamic sidewalks at five different areas of Dhaka city to make such marginalization spatially visible and provides alternative frameworks for the future development of diverse and inclusive sidewalks. [See More] [Related Paper]
POLAArizing Ray and the Collapse of Space
POLAArizing Ray and the Collapse of Space” is speculative research into the distinct image practices of artists from different 1950s worlds: those of the Bengali writer and filmmaker Satyajit Ray and the London artists and architects who produced the exhibition Parallel of Life and Art (POLAA). [See More]
Islamic HCI: Online Social Media, Image Culture, and Marginalization of Muslim Women
This paper joins the growing body of HCI literature that focuses on Muslim Feminism and explores the impact of online image sharing platforms on the lives of Muslim women in Bangladesh. [Related Paper]
Design with Women: Culturally Embedded Performative Exploration of Rural Kitchens
In rural Bangladeshi domestic context, socially embedded patriarchal practices generate different forms of spatial marginalizations. Ranging from a rural household's spatial arrangements to the speculative development strategies of the rural, gender politics play a significant role in determining women's position in a spatial context. [See More]
Residual Mobilities:Infrastructural Displacement and Post-Colonial Computing in Bangladesh
This collaborative research explores discrepancies between the founding assumptions of mobile and ubiquitous computing in the western world and the starkly different experiences of mobility and infrastructure to be found in many post-colonial environments.[See More]
Data Mapping: Climate Analysis and Ecological Strategies for Kutubdia Island, Bangladesh
This project focuses on the climate analysis of Kutubdia, Cox’s Bazar. Analytic data of Sun-path, Dry Bulb Temperature, Relative Humidity, Psychrometric Chart, Precipitation, historical Cyclonic storm track, wind velocity and direction, tidal water level height, etc. help to understand the design challenges and opportunities of understudied contexts like this.[See More]